Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows

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Health potions are for punk-assed sissies.

By Ivan Sulic

Remember when the pinnacle of gameplay was plowing through endless waves of spontaneously materializing skeletons? Remember when the crux of videogame cooperation involved leaning over a cherished loved one and gently whispering, "If you ever take my treasure again I'll kill you dead, you stupid bitch"? Ah yes, those were the days... Those were the days of Gauntlet. Now under the watchful eyes of John Romero (of Doom fame and Daikatana infamy) and Josh Sawyer (Icewind Dale distinction), Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows is prepared to enter a new era without the cursing and mindless skull bashing -- but will it still be Gauntlet?

A hundred or two years ago a tyrannical emperor thwarted the attempt of four great immortal warriors to end his life. To pay the heroes back, the emperor crucified them to a tree planted at the bottom of the Earth that was to remain on fire for all time. So yeah, it wasn't exactly a couple centuries of Club Med. Quite suddenly, and oh so mysteriously, the power that bound the four heroes dissipated and the free adventurers stepped forth from their charred prison to once again begin doing the things that heroes typically like. Only, instead of seeking their due vengeance, they found themselves obliged to save the emperor that sentenced them to fiery torment, as he is somehow connected to the very fate of the world.

That's one hell of an un-Gauntlet like story for a game called Gauntlet, so it would appear that RPG overlord Josh Sawyer is certainly doing his part. Characters with stories attached to them? Characters with purpose? Sounds like a lot to ask of a title that was once about pressing a single button one hundred million times in succession, but don't expect the light RPG components to carry too far past that; Boasting a small skill upgrade system and an easy to use inventory for item sharing, Seven Sorrows is still about devastating the enemy by hitting or shooting it, a lot. Or at least, it might be. This is where John Romero comes in.

Like Josh, John is attempting to change the action of Gauntlet. First, there are no more health potions. No fights will ever become health potion races. Now, whenever an enemy is slain the player can press a button to absorb that foe's life energy and subsequently increase his or her own. The amount of health attained is limited by the amount of fallen enemies before you. This emphasizes tag-team cooperative fighting and also lets a player back off and let an injured friend absorb the good stuff.

According to John, there's also not going to be anymore droning. The original Gauntlet focused on obliterating hordes of zombified enemies that helplessly walked straight to their deaths (some of the zombified were even zombies). Seven Sorrows opts to focus on smaller engagements with tougher adversaries. To this end, a variety of attacks and attack types are being given to the four traditional classes of Gauntlet hero (Warrior, Valkyrie, Wizard, other insignificant dude), and each attack has a different effect.

So far we know of projectile weapons, cleaving weapons, piercing weapons and magic attacks. Cleaves are for hurting multiple enemies just a little and pierces are for hurting just one enemy a whole lot. Other types of offensive actions include specials that require a bit of button mashing, super combos that need a player to rhythmically hit keys in sequence, and cooperative specials that urge gamers to lay down seals and flood the area encased by those marks with a power magical force. Block, evade and teleportation moves mean a player need not stand statuesque and let the beatings come while all this offensive action is happening, too.

Despite all this, the biggest addition to the game will be online multiplayer. Two players can play through the entire story in this fashion, but four can hit up the "advanced mode" and try their hand at besting standalone levels that are always increasing in difficulty without having to be subjected to the potentially wordy storyline.

While Seven Sorrows is still fairly early in development, one thing strikes us as odd -- it seems more like Return of the King or Demon Stone than it does Gauntlet. All the battles we witnessed were very short and featured less than a small handful of characters fighting with one another (sometimes as few as three or four). We're suspecting that this number will greatly increase when the final rolls around because the current animation routines seem ideally suited to handle dozens, if not hundreds of characters onscreen as opposed to just a small handful, which makes their clearly lacking frames all the more noticeable.

Though we haven't yet been able to put our hands on the controller and run through a level or two (hopefully there are at least a couple portals, teleportation pads and keys to find), we are looking forward to checking out a more complete version of Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows by the onset of this year's Electronic Entertainment Exposition in May.